Excerpt:
We live in an era where commercial flights to the moon are a real possibility, and evolutionary scientists at American company Colossal Biosciences are hoping to pluck the Dodo from extinction after extracting mitochondrial DNA from a 17th Century Dodo preserved by the Natural History Museum (a fascinating story that is told in The Hunt for the Oldest DNA, a documentary which premiered recently at the Science Museum)…
It isn’t only scientists and NASA technicians who are pushing the boundaries of what is possible, there is also a growing number of artists creating and innovating at the frontier between art, science and tech. The evolving conversation between art and science is happening 65 years since British scientist and writer CP Snow lectured on ‘The Two Cultures’ at Cambridge University, stressing the huge divide between the humanities and sciences, and lamenting that there was “…to be no place where the cultures meet.”
This September a month-long exhibition programme funded by the Getty foundation took place in Los Angeles—’PST Art: Art & Science Collide’ featured more than 70 galleries exploring the intersection between art and science. There hasn’t been such a close relationship between art and science since Leonardo Da Vinci excelled at both during the Renaissance. Legend has it that, to produce Mona Lisa’s mysterious smile in his most infamous painting, Da Vinci dissected bodies and studied muscles in the basement of the hospital Santa Maria Nuova.
I spoke to Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen, known for his scientific collaborations, British artist innovators Rob and Nick Carter and Dr. Bettina Kames, CEO and Co-Founder of the LAS Art Foundation in Berlin, about the work they are doing at the interface of art, science and new technology.
I spoke to Koen Vanmechelen over a zoom call from his studio in Genk, Belgium. A Belgian artist with an international profile, Vanmechelen has exhibited frequently at the Venice Biennale and his work has been shown at the Uffizi in Florence, Biennials of Moscow, Havana, Dakar and Poznan and he has addressed the World Economic Forum and various TED conferences. Koen Vanmechelen (b. 1965) is situated at the confluence of art, science, philosophy and community.
Vanmechelen travels the world looking for answers to fundamental questions that touch on issues which are both timeless and capture the zeitgeist including diversity, globalisation and human rights, and weaves those answers into enigmatic artworks. His exhibition at the Kunsthall 3,14 in Norway is the latest phases of his ongoing ‘Cosmopolitan Chicken Project’. Over the last 20 years, the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project has been presented in renowned art institutions around the world, and through it Vanmechelen explores the boundless potential hidden in biocultural diversity and the richness that springs from difference.
Vanmechelen’s fascination with chickens began at an early age. He explains: “When I was five years old, I had an incubator in my room. And I got two chickens from my parents. The incubator was a gift from my godfather, who was a biologist. So as a young kid, I was looking at how a little chick was struggling to come out of the egg. I saw that one third of the egg is air, and two thirds of the egg is chick. Then there is a division between the air and the chick, so it has to take the air, break the shell and come out. Then I saw on TV the space shuttle going to the moon. And I thought, this is the same action. You have to break the scale of the atmosphere, and then you have to find the right corner to get in. Otherwise you get burnt and game over. And I thought in life it’s like this—you have to find the right corner to exist. The rebirthing of your ID, and that’s the way you become an artist…”
